Thursday, 31 May 2012

I
sometimes have the feeling that I am too negative about the university. It is
just in
a Dutchman’s nature to complain about everything. The great things about
Utrecht University are eventually taken for granted, which is not a good thing
for a blogger like me who is out to give international students a fair look at
their possible destination.

Obviously
there are many great things I could talk about, but I want to focus on Utrecht’s
architecture. Utrecht is situated in the middle of the Netherlands, but it has
the Rhine flowing through it. A lot of the buildings next to the river have a
lower level just above the water and a main floor where there is no risk of
flooding if the water rises.

The Wikipedia page for Utrecht has
a lot of pictures and background for those interested. The buildings all look
very authentic and most university buildings inside the city center are just renovated
on the inside to accommodate a great number of students. One building, Achter Sint Pieter 200, used to be a
very big bank and still holds many authentic details while being a very modern
building once you get inside.

Inside
the city are five churches, which form a Christian cross if conntected on a
map. In the center is the Dom, a huge cathedral, with gorgeous
details. I believe you are allowed to climb to the top for only a few
euros, which is well worth it if you are not too afraid of hights.

What I
find really amazing though, is that Utrecht University also has very modern and
strange architecture. The university campus, called the Uithof, is just outside of the city, about 20 minutes by bus from
the city center. All the university buildings not in the city center are built
there and they all look incredibly modern and amazing. The Educatorium, containing
two enormous lecture halls, three examination rooms and the biggest cafeteria I
have ever seen. It has a slope down for the cafeteria and one up for the
lecture rooms. On the right side of the slope is glass so you can look outside,
where there is also a slope and several geographical figures decorating the
building.

The
library, containing more than four million books spread over several floors,
looks very modern and is very comfortable to be in. It does not only contain legal texts, but it is shared instead with all departments. If you are anything like me and you regularly feel like branching your research, this library is a gift sent from heaven.

The Minnaert
building has a fountain inside of it, which provides a green way of cooling the
building. Also, how awesome is to have a fountain greet you between classes? This is a physics building though, so you probably will not spend much time in it. Not that the university minds if you peek inside. If you really get in trouble, say you are doing a case study on laws pertaining to construction provisions.

In short, Utrecht looks awesome. Even if you do
not decide to study there, it is well worth it to visit it at least once in
your life.

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

In case
you had not noticed, I am somewhat of a nerd. When I introduced
myself, I already mentioned that I am always in front of a television or a
computer (or both), which has made me very familiar with technical issues. The
UU has a computer in every classroom that is attached to a beamer for
presentations. It is built into a big box with confusing buttons. Confusing
buttons always make me curious.

Unfortunately,
it was not until my second year that I really got to play with them. I had a
powerpoint and needed to handle the computer. The instruction pamphlet by the
machine taught me the basics and the professor present, who was a bit of a geek
herself, taught me the finer controls. It is nice to be able to help other
students and even other professors when they are having trouble with it.

Anyway,
I always carry my laptop with me to classes. This is firstly because I can type
much faster than I can write by hand and secondly because digital notes can be
distributed much more easily and can be shared online on my blog. Originally I
just put them online with the idea of students coming along and discussing and
correcting my work. Instead, it seems I am the go-to guy for skipping homework
and finding the notes to classes people missed or skipped.

Most
classrooms in the UU are fit perfectly for laptop use. Well, as long as there
are only half a dozen laptop users. The buildings are pretty authentic and not
build with an endless supply of electrical sockets. In fact, I often try to be
the first one to enter a classroom so that I can make sure I am seated in one
of the four of five seats that have the easiest time getting electricity. Lately
I have been bringing an extension cord so that more laptops can be plugged in
and I am guaranteed a worry-free class.

I have
to say though, the technical assistance is amazing. There is standard
documentation for most technical questions (like connecting to the protected
wi-fi) and the few times I did have trouble, a quick e-mail to the IT crowd resolved
the issues almost immediately. And Wi-fi coverage is extensive; I do not know
of even one room in University buildings where I cannot connect easily to it.

Thursday, 24 May 2012

Last week I
talked about doing research for my thesis and what that meant. Obviously, the
next step is putting that research to good use. Like doing the research, there
are a couple of ways to present your findings that are pretty distinct. Here I
focus on presenting the findings of research on relevant literature.

The first
type is the most factual. You have found out some information, and you present
it ordered by source. I did this with my bachelor thesis,
talking about the desirability of minimum punishments[1].
I had collected articles of several prominent lawyers, summarized their
opinions and arguments on the matter and presented them per writer. I called
the chapter ‘views on authors on minimum punishments’ and started 9 out 10
paragraphs with the name of an author. Knigge wrote in 2000 about X. Duker
agrees with Knigge on X1, but differs when it comes to X2.

The problem
of course is that it reads very much as a summary and is not very useful for
actual results. A better method is to use all the arguments and make your own framework.
That is, use the substance of the views of the authors, without going into
detail who said what. It is what I am trying to do as much as possible in my
master thesis. It requires a lot of originality, which also means it is highly error-prone.
Also, to make everything fit, it is very possible you will have to disregard
some views. This happens mostly when different models have fundamental
differences in their starting points.

This
happens a lot in criminal law when it comes to the goals of punishments and
penal law. Going back to minimum punishments, its desirability depends a lot on
what you believe are the primary goals of punishment. When retribution is your
mail goal, extra punishments are fully justified. When you actually care about
the welfare of society and the criminal as a human being, more flexibility is
desired.

A completely
different alternative to present the findings is to simply look at one author
and thoroughly explain their views, before applying it to another problem. I
did this with a paper I wrote for Comparative Legal Cultures[2].
In it I used the model of Hofstede, who has tried to scientifically index
facets of national cultures, to chart the acceptance of Same-sex marriage in
Europe. The description of the model was far more in-depth than it would have
been with the first method of presenting research, without all the risks of overlooking
certain aspects that the second method has.

Obviously,
this all is just the tip of the iceberg, but hopefully it is at least a nice
introduction. Now, I am off to stop procrastinating and work on my master
thesis… after I finish walking the dog.

[1]Minimum punishments: under certain
conditions, a judge is required to give the guilty suspect a minimum amount of
punishment; my thesis was about a minimum amount of prison time for repeat
offenders.

[2]I have been meaning to put
this paper online, but it has delayed due to the complexity of the format.

Monday, 21 May 2012

There is a
new field in the Dutch legal scene called ‘civilology’.
In a notation of a recent case by the higher appeal court (Hoge Raad), Vranken wrote about this new version of civil law (NJ 2012,182-184). In the NJB (the Dutch Legal Journal), Hartlief
describes this notation and he has a few questions.

The example
given by Hartlief is of a truck that hit a child playing by a heap of sand. It
drove forward a bit and then backed up, seriously wounding the child. The lower
court ruled that the driver is not liable because he should not have needed to
pay attention to the child; the driver could have reasonably thought that a
child would stay far away from such a large and dangerous truck. The higher
court disagreed and considered that children are highly unpredictable and that
such a large truck would have attracted their attention.

Civilology
would roll its eyes at both rulings, muttering ‘merely hypotheses’ before
finding an actual answer using the results of empirical sciences. Looking
through psychology and biology journals probably will not let you find an
article written specifically to test the attractiveness of large trucks on
children, but there will be articles with the most accurate information about
children’s behavior. The limits mentioned by Hartlief include that those fields
of study are not writing articles while thinking about the problems of civil
law (they have different priorities), and that the civiloligist needs to be
always wary of the quality and relevance of the science.

The
questions being asked are whether this is a good thing. I will say,
unapologetically, that this is possibly the best thing that has ever happened
to the legal system since criminology. At the moment judges make an informed
guess. How improved would their decisions be if they would actually based on,
you know, that trivial thing called reality?

It reminds
of a recent article in the Advocatenblad
(Advocate’s Journal) where a lawyer wrote an article meant to scientifically
discuss the effects of (prison) punishments. He described the criminology view
(based on actual science) and then made up an alternative hypothesis on the
spot, acting like he had thusly debunked the entire argument. This is of course
not how the empirical debate works and it illustrates the reason why I often
sigh and roll my eyes when the study of law is called a science.

There are a
few ground rules. If you can use any evidence to prove your hypothesis, it is not
science. If you can use your hypothesis to explain any evidence, it is not science. These are
among the principles that really ought to be taught to anyone who cares about
the truth. Imagining the answer is easy, actually finding it is hard.
Civilology is a great step to getting where we should be.

Monday, 14 May 2012

It is
always a strange sensation when you are required to research your material.
Coming from a background in exact science, I expect research to entail the
scientific process and to contain actual experiments. For law, however, most
research comes from reading texts that others have written; either a lawmaker
who makes the rules or a judge or professor who interprets them.

For my
master thesis, I need to do three kinds of research. The first is research into
literature and has to do with the principle of legality (focusing on lex
certa). Since this is such a famous principle, I can easily find a lot about it
from just the handbooks I have available to me already. The handbook by De
Hullu, for instance, includes pages and pages of discussion on the principle.
Other works are referenced and one needs to double check the logic used, but it
still feels like a massive appeal to authority some of the time.

The second
type of research is done regarding a new law. I need to get familiar with the
new provisions, read the Memorandum of law to understand the intentions and
finally read the written transcripts of the lawmaker’s discussions. This is
hugely illuminating and I really feel like I am getting useful data about the
material… sometimes. Other times I feel like I am just summarizing.

The final
type of research is done by comparing specific provisions with other provisions.
Since I am talking about a provision that summons a general responsibility for
the well-being of animals, it becomes very useful to compare that with the
provisions that summon a general responsibility for the well-being of the
environment, or for the soil. I have never actually done this before, so I will
be a little unclear about its details until I do it for my thesis.

There are
other kinds of research, obviously, some even requiring the researcher to look
up actual scientific work like Biology or Chemistry. I did this about twice in
my four-year study, both times with far less rigor than I would expect to be
needed, both times with far more praise than I had anticipated. There are also
research methods where you analyse cultures from the past or compare with the
provisions of other countries.

All these
methods have in common that they are pretty far removed from fully objective
research. This bothers me at times, except when I realise there really are not
many alternatives when dealing with law. If I wanted an exact science, I should
have studied Physics instead. Or Chemistry. Or Biology. Or… basically any other
study that actually studies the world instead of an arbitrary system of
human-made rules.

Monday, 7 May 2012

I have
always had a weird relationship with being graded. I hate failing, I love high
grades, but I have never truly been able to predict whether I will get a high
grade or a low grade. You would think that means I am incredibly nervous when
receiving grades, but the opposite is true. Just last week I got a grade which
I did not bother to check until a few days had gone by first. Not because I was
nervous; I had simply forgotten the grade was published that week.

Basically,
I already knew I had a passing grade, just not what kind of passing grade. I
can be incredibly confident when it comes to written assignments, maybe more so
than I should be. In this case I had received a score of 60%, made into 67%
because the whole class had difficulty with the exam. I finished the course
with 74% average and I am pretty pleased with the result.

On the
other hand, I can never be pleased with the results of individual assessment.
That is, when I write a paper and I get anything less than full points I am
inclined to argue and fuss. I also get extremely nervous and anxious when
receiving the results, because there are far fewer excuses to hide behind if there
is negative feedback. It sounds really silly when writing it down like this,
but it is still true.

Like
mentioned before, I suffer from a pretty bad case of imposter syndrome. No
matter what I am doing, I get the sense that if I make the tiniest slip up,
people will figure out I have no idea what I am doing and strip me of my
bachelor’s degree (and, in a few months, of my master’s degree). Rationally, I know
that this is their problem and not mine. If people were really going to critique,
for instance, my spelling by saying it is so abysmal that I should have been
kicked out of this university on the first day, then it is not my spelling that
is the problem but their inability to properly value the properties required of
a student. Had my spelling truly been that important, I would indeed have been
kicked out sooner.

It sounds a
bit Zen, but the important part is your own sense of accomplishment, the way
that you value yourself, not some grade that has been given to you by some
other person. And yes, I say that fully knowing that I would have been elatedly
rubbing my grade in your faces if it had been over 80%.